Raspbian Based Image

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The first Raspbian (Debian7 / Wheezy) based image is finally available on the downloads page. Credits go to Hexxeh for providing the base image. Credits also go to the lame german for his excellent description on how to make FreePBX 2.10.0 work with PHP 5.4.

The documentation page is updated with instructions on how to complete an initial set-up.

A few details on the improvements:

1. Raspbian

Raspbian provides optimised performance on the Raspberry Pi by using the ARM processor’s hard float instruction set.

2. Exim4

For email delivery, Exim is robust and easy to configure. Check the documentation page on how to set up email for your RPi.

3. Watchdog

In case your RPi crashes sometimes, you might have chosen a non-suitable power supply. In order to at least reduce the downtime in such a case, the activated watchdog automatically reboots your RPi 10s after a serious crash.

4. SSH hostkeys

No hassle with regenerating your host keys. It is done automatically on the first boot.

39 thoughts on “Raspbian Based Image”

  1. Pingback: Schnelle SD-Karten mit dem Raspberry nutzen | Embedded Software

  2. Hello everyone!

    First of all, thank you very much for the heavy work you are doing here. We, the “regular” users, really appreciate all your effort.

    Secondly, I would like to ask you something about the OS installed on the raspbx’s SD image. I’m having problems installing additional stuff on my RPi because the watchdog is constantly rebooting the system (as, when the CPU load is very high, “it thinks” that there has been a problem). So, is there any way of enabling/disabling the watchdog daemon manually?

    (I’m using an iPhone’s charger as power source for my RPi, but I don’t think that’s the problem, because when I use the official raspbian image I don’t have this issue)

    Thank you very much!
    Thank you very much!

    • Thank you for your feedback! I don’t think the problems you experience are originating from the watchdog, instead this was a problem present in the September image and fixed some time ago. Check this comment for details.
      If you don’t want to fix it manually, just install the upgrades as described on the downloads page. Upgrade #4 includes the fix to /etc/sysctl.conf

      If you really want to stop the watchdog, just run
      /etc/init.d/watchdog stop

      Or remove it completely with
      apt-get remove watchdog

      • Thank you! Everything is working perfect now! Sorry I didn’t see that comment before asking.

        Best regards!

  3. Hello,

    I’m not sure if I should post this here or somewhere else but the image above doesn’t seem to be working. When I load the image onto the SD card, my Pi doesn’t boot!
    Everything seems to work when I load the image from the official website. Can anyone help, what can I be doing wrong? Or should I install Asterisk myself onto the official image? I really like the idea of automatic updates!
    Thanks

      • It worked fine this time! Thanks 🙂 I don’t know what was wrong before. I was using Windows 7 disk imager as described on raspberry’s website.

        Is the local login disabled? I can only login through ssh.

  4. I have tried to install System Admin module but this message pops up.
    —————————————
    Module Administration
    Errors with selection:

    System Admin cannot be installed:
    PHP Component Zend Guard Loader is required but missing from you PHP installation.
    File /usr/sbin/incrond must exist.
    Please try again after the dependencies have been installed.

    No actions to perform
    —————————————

    • The Zend Guard Loader is closed source, and only available as binary package for x86 systems. No RPi version available, sorry…

  5. It works like a charm! You’re really the best to share all this! My compliments to everybody that follow this important project. With a little skills, your guide and 35£, everybody now can have a domestic Asterisk PBX. It’s a dream! Thank you!

  6. Hello,
    great again !!!!
    Somebody knows how to setup g729 codec?, I need some source code to compilate, Digium does not provide binaries for raspberry

    Thanks.

  7. Thank you for your efforts!

    I have this set up so that family and friends across the world can talk to each other for free. I then extended it to be used as a phone system for my wife’s two small business. Someone calls the her number and it either rings in the office or on her mobile using 3CX or finally gives up and diverts to the normal mobile number.

    Very very happy I found this. Thanks again.

    Crispin

    • Would you like to see something in particular? I am working on some improvements, but my time is often limited…

      • I tried to apt-get update and then apt-get update-dist but the raspberry restarts. Maybe it has to do with the watchdog?

        • I had the same problem, apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade and also rpi-update crashed very often. Then after changing the power supply to a different one it became much better. It still crashes once in a while but much less than before. Therfore: try different power supplies until you find one that works. It seems to be related to disk and Ethernet IO, crashes happen mostly when disk/Ethernet is used a lot.
          It is not a problem of the watchdog itself, the kernel issues some messages telling it crashed on the console, then the watchdog reboots the device.

        • I would like to update on this issue, as I have similar problems on my setup. After investigating closer, it looks like my USB keyboard and mouse introduce some instability. After disconnecting both, apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade did not crash the RPi anymore. Maybe this could also help you, or in general the RPi troubleshooting page.

    • You can configure overclocking with the raspi-config tool. Install it with these commands:
      apt-get install lua5.2 whiptail
      wget -O /usr/bin/raspi-config https://raw.github.com/asb/raspi-config/master/raspi-config && chmod 755 /usr/bin/raspi-config

      Then run:
      raspi-config

  10. Hello,
    First, thanks for your awesome work.

    I’ve tried the 14-07-2012 version and it work just fine, but I am not able to boot with the last release (12-09-2012).

    I’m using windows 7 to put image on the SD card, i’ve tried with win32diskimager and flashnul like it’s explained on the Wiki. I’ve tried 2 SD card (4GB and 8GB), old release is ok on both cards but not the new one. I’ve also tried to download with the direct link and torrent, and i’ve check the sha1 hash.

    If some one can give me an idea how to fix this. i realy want to try this optimised version.

    Thanks a lot.

    • After flashing the card, can you mount the FAT32 boot partition and read the files on it? On Windows it should just show up as another drive when inserting the card in your reader. The contents are:

      -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2464912 Sep 9 15:23 arm128_start.elf
      -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2464912 Sep 9 15:23 arm192_start.elf
      -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2464912 Sep 9 15:23 arm224_start.elf
      -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 641104 Sep 9 15:23 arm240_start.elf
      -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 16536 Sep 9 15:23 bootcode.bin
      -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 124 Apr 19 07:58 cmdline.txt
      -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 13 May 1 18:03 config.txt
      -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 41 Sep 9 15:25 .firmware_revision
      -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 26 Apr 19 07:58 issue.txt
      -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4225540 Sep 9 15:23 kernel_cutdown.img
      -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5948852 May 13 12:33 kernel_debug.img
      -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 16443564 Sep 9 15:24 kernel_emergency.img
      -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5263684 Sep 9 15:24 kernel.img
      -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 278715 Sep 9 15:23 loader.bin
      -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2464912 Sep 9 15:25 start.elf

      Fdisk on the card device should show this:

      Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
      /dev/sdb1 2048 155647 76800 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
      /dev/sdb2 157696 7354367 3598336 83 Linux
      /dev/sdb3 7354368 7744511 195072 82 Linux swap / Solaris

      Is anyone else having similar problems?

      • Thx for your reply..

        I have mount the SD on one of my Linux VM on virtualBox with USB pass-through.:

        -rw-r–r– 1 brice brice 2464912 sept. 9 15:23 arm128_start.elf
        -rw-r–r– 1 brice brice 2464912 sept. 9 15:23 arm192_start.elf
        -rw-r–r– 1 brice brice 2464912 sept. 9 15:23 arm224_start.elf
        -rw-r–r– 1 brice brice 641104 sept. 9 15:23 arm240_start.elf
        -rw-r–r– 1 brice brice 16536 sept. 9 15:23 bootcode.bin
        -rw-r–r– 1 brice brice 124 avril 19 07:58 cmdline.txt
        -rw-r–r– 1 brice brice 13 mai 1 18:03 config.txt
        -rw-r–r– 1 brice brice 41 sept. 9 15:25 .firmware_revision
        -rw-r–r– 1 brice brice 26 avril 19 07:58 issue.txt
        -rw-r–r– 1 brice brice 4225540 sept. 9 15:23 kernel_cutdown.img
        -rw-r–r– 1 brice brice 5948852 mai 13 12:33 kernel_debug.img
        -rw-r–r– 1 brice brice 16443564 sept. 9 15:24 kernel_emergency.img
        -rw-r–r– 1 brice brice 5263684 sept. 9 15:24 kernel.img
        -rw-r–r– 1 brice brice 278715 sept. 9 15:23 loader.bin
        -rw-r–r– 1 brice brice 2464912 sept. 9 15:25 start.elf

        Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
        /dev/sdb1 2048 155647 76800 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
        /dev/sdb2 157696 7354367 3598336 83 Linux
        /dev/sdb3 7354368 7744511 195072 82 Linux swap / Solaris

        So i have exactly the same things.

        Just for testing, I have tried with the other card with the old release and I have this partition schema

        /dev/sdb1 2048 155647 76800 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
        /dev/sdb2 157696 7340031 3591168 83 Linux
        /dev/sdb3 7340032 7743487 201728 82 Linux swap / Solaris

        Do you think that setup the card directly on linux can change somethings ? I’ll try late this day.

        Thx

        • I was able to install the img with BerryBoot installer (advanced install with partition conversion). So finally it’s good 🙂

          Thx

        • On Windows, the FAT32 start partition is usually mounted to a drive directly after flashing the card. It could be possible some program running on your Windows machine is altering the start partition. I’m always using dd on Linux to flash the cards, it is a good idea to try this, too.
          Then maybe also try a few different power supplies, as several problems have been reported related to weak power supplies, such as Ethernet not working and others.
          You could also try the original image from Hexxeh I’ve been using as a base, to see if this as the same problem.

  11. thanks! I now have this working and will be using it for a small SOHO. Vertical learning curve but it’s all fun:-)

  12. For some reason the latest version of the Asterisk for Raspberry Pi does not detect the network card. I tried with another card with regular Raspiabn – works. Tried with the same card (put Raspbian on it) – works.

    Can you follow up on this?

    • Can you tell me which network card you are referring to? I’ve only tested the internal ethernet which worked perfectly fine for me. External cards connected to USB usually need additional drivers. Can you tell me exactly which vendor/device you are using?

  14. Is there any way to add Skype as outgoing/incoming trunk without any monthly fee to Skype?

    That, I think, would be a very nice to have feature….

    thank you again for your terrific work….

  15. cannot install vim…

    apt-get install vim
    Reading package lists… Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information… Done
    The following extra packages will be installed:
    libgpm2 vim-common vim-runtime
    Suggested packages:
    gpm ctags vim-doc vim-scripts
    The following NEW packages will be installed:
    libgpm2 vim vim-common vim-runtime
    0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
    Need to get 7,351 kB of archives.
    After this operation, 24.9 MB of additional disk space will be used.
    Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
    Get:1 http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy/main libgpm2 armhf 1.20.4-6 [34.9 kB]
    Get:2 http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy/main vim-common armhf 2:7.3.547-4 [164 kB]
    Get:3 http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy/main vim-runtime all 2:7.3.547-4 [6,282 kB]

    • I tried “apt-get install vim” directly on the console on my RPi and it installed absolutely fine.